I’ve been lurking around reading the fora for a few weeks looking in over your shoulders and decided that generally I like the way you all communicate. I’ve also used several of the links to access reference material. This is a very valuable web site.
About me: I have an M.A. in Classics from well before the millenium ended. It’s been a while so large amounts of rust have set in. Not only has a lot of water gone under the bridge since then, a lot of it has evaporated. Now that my time is my own I am able to return to antiquity and start filling up the creek again. The grammar is beginning to come back.
Some other interests (non-exhaustive) in no particular order:
Egyptology including reading the hieroglyphs currently reading the Inscription of a Rebellion in Nubia against Dhehuty (Tuthmosis) III. Perhaps I’ll learn hieratic someday.
History - ancient and American.
Astronomy - making and reporting observations of variable stars and eclipsing binaries, which data is made available through the AAVSO to professional astronomers, - very little deep sky stuff.
Archao-astronomy - particulary Egpytian.
Cosmology, Relativity, and Quantum Theory
Current classical activity:
Re-reading Caesar;
Homeros; II. Book 2.
Geminos
Location: Waunakee, Wisconsin. Go Packers!
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Ancient Egyptian first, then astronomy at the end of this post.
Ancient Egyptian is, in a word, hard.
I once threw my intro Greek grammar at a wall in frustration. I haven't done that with any Egyptian grammars if only because, after Greek, I'm less easily frustrated now.
I don't know what you mean by 'how it measures up". I will say just these few words: We only have half the language. No vowels. There are about two dozen verb forms for each of (depending on how you count 'em) four or maybe two dozen verb types and most of them look exactly alike. There is no standard spelling and glyphs can be placed in the wrong order, or omitted, for aesthetic reasons, it just looks prettier that way, or even gratuitously added because it makes it look more archaic and therefore more authoritative that way.
Unlike Latin, which we knew all along, and Greek, which we learned from the Greeks who fled the fall of Constantinople, the decipherment of Egyptian is a wholly modern process. There are several competing "theories" of the grammar of the verbs and there is not even consensus on the terminology or the transliteration schemes.
That sounds like we don't really know what Ancient Egyptian says. We do, but the devil is in the details.
It is a fascinating endeavor, a look at yet another culture, one which is even stranger and more bizarre (from our point of view) than the Greeks and Romans ever were. It's been a wonderful experience. I recommend it.
Astronomy. The vast majority of my endeavor there is in recording and reporting observational data on variable stars and eclipsing binaries, but I do occasionally look at other things. (I distinguish carefully between observing objects and just looking at them.) But something fun to look at is the naked-eye comet that's up in Perseus right now (a great view in binoculars - better in a telescope of course). One of the people mentioned a lot of Latin names for the stars he is seeing in the morning. Some more Latin names are up there in the morning these days, like Venus and Saturn(us). And every now and then Luna comes marching by.
Ancient Egyptian is, in a word, hard.
I once threw my intro Greek grammar at a wall in frustration. I haven't done that with any Egyptian grammars if only because, after Greek, I'm less easily frustrated now.
I don't know what you mean by 'how it measures up". I will say just these few words: We only have half the language. No vowels. There are about two dozen verb forms for each of (depending on how you count 'em) four or maybe two dozen verb types and most of them look exactly alike. There is no standard spelling and glyphs can be placed in the wrong order, or omitted, for aesthetic reasons, it just looks prettier that way, or even gratuitously added because it makes it look more archaic and therefore more authoritative that way.
Unlike Latin, which we knew all along, and Greek, which we learned from the Greeks who fled the fall of Constantinople, the decipherment of Egyptian is a wholly modern process. There are several competing "theories" of the grammar of the verbs and there is not even consensus on the terminology or the transliteration schemes.
That sounds like we don't really know what Ancient Egyptian says. We do, but the devil is in the details.
It is a fascinating endeavor, a look at yet another culture, one which is even stranger and more bizarre (from our point of view) than the Greeks and Romans ever were. It's been a wonderful experience. I recommend it.
Astronomy. The vast majority of my endeavor there is in recording and reporting observational data on variable stars and eclipsing binaries, but I do occasionally look at other things. (I distinguish carefully between observing objects and just looking at them.) But something fun to look at is the naked-eye comet that's up in Perseus right now (a great view in binoculars - better in a telescope of course). One of the people mentioned a lot of Latin names for the stars he is seeing in the morning. Some more Latin names are up there in the morning these days, like Venus and Saturn(us). And every now and then Luna comes marching by.